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Thoughts on wide bevel knives?

What do you all think about wide bevel knives like Carter, Takeda, Moritaka, and who ever else makes them.

How do you sharpen them and what grit level do you finish at?

Personally I lay the wide bevel flat and grind until everything is even and I've got a burr on each side. I take that bevel all the way to the highest stone I have out at the time then make a microbevel with that stone and leather strop at about 45 degrees.

Wow, 45 degrees is pretty dang steep, even for a microbevel. But yeah, that's pretty much what I do. I have a Yanagi that I keep a Hamagabura(I might be making that word up) edge on, which is basically a traditional single bevel where the big bevel gets a slight convex to it. Keeps fish from sticking to it, though it is a bit more time consuming--that's how it came though, and I don't have the stones to flatten it cause it's all sentimental and stuff.

*edit* except I don't do the "burr on both sides" thing. Not sure what that means. You do remove the burr after every stone, right?

Wow, 45 degrees is pretty dang steep, even for a microbevel. But yeah, that's pretty much what I do. I have a Yanagi that I keep a Hamagabura(I might be making that word up) edge on, which is basically a traditional single bevel where the big bevel gets a slight convex to it. Keeps fish from sticking to it, though it is a bit more time consuming--that's how it came though, and I don't have the stones to flatten it cause it's all sentimental and stuff.

*edit* except I don't do the "burr on both sides" thing. Not sure what that means. You do remove the burr after every stone, right?

45 degrees is not all that bad... for certain knives/steels, my microbevels are around 35-45 degrees

For a long time I sharpened my carter down on the wide bevels just as you said above, bringing them both all the way down till they met and started to burr then put on a microbevel. I have since started putting a secondary bevel on at about 10 degrees for a couple of reason, 1 I was constantly getting small chips with the super thin edge and 2 sharpening always seemed to take forever that way and getting the burr completely off was a pita for me.

I'm much happier with the overall performance of the knife now that I'm using a secondary bevel. The edge last much longer, is much less prone to chipping, and is IMO much quicker to sharpen.

I will say however that the knife definitely doesn't get as sharp, close enough not to matter, but definitely not as sharp.

I do have similar problems with my Carter chipping if I use a poly board or if it comes into contact with bone or something, but otherwise it is fine. I do not have a problem with any of the other knives like this though.

I am not sure if this is the "correct" way to do this, but I just flatten the bevels once then only strop/sharpen the microbevel.

I am not exactly sure if my microbevel is actually 45 degrees, but I am sure it is pretty close to that. It is just where my hands go.

For my regular knives, they all have the same angle though I really am not sure what that is.

I'm not sure this wide area is really a "bevel", but rather just the way a kuro-uchi knife is ground. It somewhat resembles a kiriba, but AFAIK, a kiriba is a feature of a true single-bevel knife.

If you measure the angle of this wide area, at least on the knives I own, it is way less than ten degrees. So, it's no wonder that the edge is fragile if you use this area as a guide for your sharpening.

I think what looks like a microbevel on these knives is the actual bevel.